Chewing gum is a popular and widely enjoyed confectionery. It is typically provided in neat, clean packages, which allow the gum to be conveniently carried in pockets, purses, hand bags, or the like. Furthermore, individual pieces of chewing gum are typically individually packaged or wrapped so the gum can be placed in the mouth without needing to touch it.
However, once the chewing gum has been spent by chewing, it needs to be disposed of. Unfortunately, because spent chewing gum is sticky, wet, and generally messy, there are at least two problems with its disposal.
First, it leaves a sticky residue on the hand used to remove the spent chewing gum out of the mouth to place it somewhere else. Furthermore, because the spent chewing gum is sticky, wet and messy, it can not be placed in a pocket, purse or the like to be discarded at a later time such as when a proper garbage receptacle is located.
Accordingly, for most gum chewers, spent chewing gum poses an inconvenience. For example, in restaurants gum chewers must remove the chewing gum from their mouths to eat and drink their food. In the past, restaurants had ashtrays on the tables, and gum chewers could discard the spent chewing gum in the ashtray. Although, this solved the disposal problem, it did not solve the problems of the sticky residue on the hand, nor the problem of removing the sticky gum from the ashtray. Nowadays, because of the smoking bans in restaurants, ashtrays are no longer present on the tables, and gum chewers face the problem of what to do with the spent chewing gum.
In situations where there is no nearby garbage receptacle in which to discard the spent chewing gum, the gum chewer typically has no choice but to discard the spent chewing gum anyway, when no one is looking. For example people have been known to stick spent chewing gum under restaurant tables and chairs, or on the ground as they are walking. As can be appreciated, such methods of discarding the spent chewing gum are unsanitary, and impact the environment since it is very difficult to remove the spent chewing gum from such surfaces.
U.S. Pat. No. 969,329 which issued to Blake on Sep. 6, 1910, and German Utility Model number 299 19 654 which issued to Kientopf on Apr. 20, 2000 disclose similar attempts to overcome the above problems with spent chewing gum. Both Blake and Kientopf disclose a gum box associated with a holder for the spent gum. However, in both of these devices, the spent chewing gum sticks to the walls of the container which is unsanitary and makes it difficult to dispose of the gum when a suitable garbage receptacle is finally located. Moreover, the user must handle the spent chewing gum when transferring it from the containers to the garbage receptacle, which, as mentioned above, is sticky, wet and generally messy.
U.S. patent application publication number 2006/0051457 of Bougoulas et al. discloses a much later attempt to overcome the above problems with spent chewing gum. Bougoulas et al. disclose a chewing gum package with gum disposal accommodations. The gum disposal accommodation is described as a disposal sheets which are associated with the chewing gum package for wrapping spent chewing gum prior to disposal. However, this reference fails to teach a waste receptacle associated with the chewing gum package. Accordingly, users of the Bougoulas device still experience the nuisance of dealing with the wrapped spent gum until they locate a garbage receptacle.
Accordingly, there is a need for improvement in this field. What is desired, therefore, is a device which addresses at least some of the problems with spent chewing gum discussed above.